Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

First Edition: July 7, 2017

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.

Kaiser Health News:
Do-It-Yourself Detox Can Be ‘Freddy Krueger’ Scary — And Usually Fails
By the time Elvis Rosado was 25, he was addicted to opioids and serving time in jail for selling drugs to support his habit.“I was like, ‘I have to kick this, I have to break this,’ ” he said. For Rosado, who lives in Philadelphia, drugs had become a way to disassociate from “the reality that was life.” He’d wake up physically needing the drugs to function. (Gordon, 7/7)

Kaiser Health News:
Amount Of Opioids Prescribed In U.S. Has Been Falling Since 2010
Ryan Hampton was sitting at his computer at work when he began sweating, feeling sick and unable to concentrate. He went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face and called his friend for help.That was the day he realized he was addicted to opioids. Hampton, now 36 and living in Los Angeles, said the prescription for his pain medication had run out and he didn’t realize he would face withdrawal problems. (Connor, 7/6)

Kaiser Health News:
Podcast: What The Health? Why Is This Stuff So Complicated?
Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Joanne Kenen of Politico, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post discuss the latest on the Senate’s effort to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, and why it is so difficult to make popular changes, such as requiring insurers to cover people with preexisting health conditions. (7/6)

The Associated Press:
McConnell Says Limited Bill Needed If GOP Health Bill Dies
A bill focused on buttressing the nation's insurance marketplaces will be needed if the full-fledged Republican effort to repeal much of President Barack Obama's health care law fails, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday. It was one of his most explicit acknowledgments that his party's top-priority drive to erase much of Obama's landmark 2010 statutes might fall short. (7/6)

The Washington Post:
McConnell Says GOP Must Shore Up ACA Insurance Markets If Senate Bill Dies
His suggestion that he and his colleagues might instead try to bolster the insurance exchanges created under the ACA is at odds with Republican talking points that they are beyond repair. The marketplaces were built for people who do not have access to affordable coverage through a job, and at last count slightly more than 10 million Americans had health plans purchased through the exchanges. More than 8 in 10 customers bought their plans with federal subsidies the law provides. (Eilperin and Goldstein, 7/6)

Politico:
McConnell: If We Can't Repeal Obamacare, We'll Fix It
A bill to strengthen the insurance markets would presumably need Democratic support to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. McConnell in the past has warned fractious GOP lawmakers that if the Republican-only repeal effort failed, he would be forced to work with top Democrat Chuck Schumer on legislation that conservatives would likely oppose much more than the GOP repeal bill. He repeated that after a White House meeting with the president last week. (Haberkorn, 7/6)

Politico:
How The Senate Health Bill Became ‘Obamacare Lite’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously promised to rip out Obamacare “root and branch,” a sentiment echoed by Republicans on the campaign trail for seven years. But Obamacare is proving harder to eradicate than kudzu, and Republicans may be stuck with major parts of Barack Obama’s legacy. (Demko, 7/6)

Los Angeles Times:
Republicans Are In Charge. So Why Can't They Deliver On Healthcare?
For the better part of a decade, “repeal and replace” has been Republican gospel, a political talking point and policy manifesto. Other issues that long served as the glue holding together the disparate GOP coalition — free trade, a deep and abiding suspicion of Russia, “traditional family values” — have loosened their grip on the party and its voters. (Barabak, 7/6)

Politico:
Rand And Donald’s Wild Health Care Ride
After a bitter rivalry during the 2016 presidential campaign, Sen. Rand Paul and President Donald Trump just can’t quit each other. And they are teaming up to confound everyone in Washington on the GOP’s attempts to repeal Obamacare. After Paul dubbed candidate Trump an “orange-faced windbag” and Trump questioned whether candidate Paul had a “properly functioning brain,” the two have begun to build a strong relationship. Trump has expended major energy courting Paul and they’ve developed what Paul calls a “good rapport.” They’ve played golf and chat regularly on the phone. (Everett and Dawsey, 7/7)

The Washington Post:
One Reason The GOP Health Bill Is A Mess: No One Thought Trump Would Win
Toomey, now playing a critical role in negotiations over the GOP health-care bill, spent most of last year criticizing Trump’s personal behavior and the fights he picked on social media. Toomey did not announce his support for Trump’s candidacy until polls closed in Pennsylvania on Nov. 8, fully aware that no Republican presidential candidate had won his state since 1988 — and assuming that Trump would continue the streak. (Kane, 7/6)

The New York Times:
Unlikely Holdout Underscores Challenge For Senate Health Bill
Cheryl Hofstetter Duffy began by telling Senator Jerry Moran that she was a breast cancer survivor. Then she asked why the debate over the Affordable Care Act was focused on repealing and replacing the law, rather than simply making it better. When she finished, the crowd jammed into a community center on Thursday applauded. Mr. Moran, a Kansas Republican who came out last week against the Senate leadership’s repeal bill, picked up on the sentiment, lamenting that both parties were locked in opposition over health care, with Republicans pursuing repeal and Democrats saying, he said, “Not one inch are we giving.” “And so the rhetoric puts us into the corners of the ring,” he said, “and never a meeting of the minds.” (Kaplan, 7/6)

The Wall Street Journal:
GOP Senator Urged To Oppose Health Bill At Town Hall
At Mr. Moran’s town-hall meeting, no one spoke out in support of the Republican bill, though one voter sharply criticized the 2010 law, calling it “socialized medicine.” Mr. Moran said that rather than continue to push a flawed bill, GOP leaders should pursue negotiations with Democrats, including public hearings and amendments from both sides. He spoke repeatedly about fixing or repairing the law, saying it has “benefited some people.” For Mr. Moran, the first GOP senator to sponsor legislation repealing the ACA after its passage in 2010, his stance marked a stark shift. (Hackman, 7/6)

The Washington Post:
A Town Hall In Kansas Shows Republican Struggles With Health-Care Bill
Moran, the only Republican senator holding unscreened town halls on health care this week, revealed just how much his party is struggling to pass a bill — and even how to talk about it. The people who crowded in and around Palco’s community center aimed to prove that there was no demand for a repeal of the ACA, even in the reddest parts of a deep red state. (Weigel, 7/6)

Politico:
Moran Feels Surprising Squeeze On Obamacare Repeal
The Urban Institute says about 120,000 residents in Kansas would lose coverage under the Senate Republican plan, which disproportionately hits the state’s older and more rural population, according to David Jordan, executive director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas. (Kim, 7/7)

Politico:
McCaskill Finds Obamacare Fans In Trump Country
Claire McCaskill took a quick poll Thursday in the middle of her seventh town hall in two days, asking constituents to raise their hands if they supported the Senate GOP’s Obamacare repeal plan. Two hands rose among the crowd of about five dozen in this deep-red county. When McCaskill asked the same question earlier Thursday at a public meeting in Moberly, another rural Missouri town where President Donald Trump won overwhelmingly, no one raised their hands. (Schor, 7/6)

Los Angeles Times:
Medicaid’s Vital Role For Children In Trump Country
Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Progam, CHIP, provide critical protections to children in poor, rural parts of America. A majority of these areas backed Donald Trump last year. Now President Trump is pushing healthcare legislation that would dramatically cut the healthcare safety net. (Krishnakumar and Levey, 7/6)

Stat:
Brenda Fitzgerald Is Expected To Be Named New CDC Director
Georgia’s public health commissioner, an obstetrician-gynecologist and two-time Republican candidate for Congress, is expected to be named the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to multiple reports. Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald will replace Dr. Tom Frieden, who served as CDC director for eight years before stepping down in January. (Branswell, 7/6)

The New York Times:
Opioid Prescriptions Fall After 2010 Peak, C.D.C. Report Finds
The amount of opioid painkillers prescribed in the United States peaked in 2010, a new federal analysis has found, with prescriptions for higher, more dangerous doses dropping most sharply — by 41 percent — since then. But the analysis, by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also found that the prescribing rate in 2015 remained three times as high as in 1999, when the nation’s problem with opioid addiction was just getting started. (Goodnough, 7/6)

The Associated Press:
Opioid Prescribing Is Falling In The US, But Not Everywhere
Overall opioid prescription rates have been falling in recent years, but the powerful drugs have become more plentiful in more than than 1 in 5 U.S. counties, a report released Thursday finds. The amount of opioids prescribed fell 18 percent between 2010 and 2015. But researchers found local differences, with opioid prescribing six times higher in some counties than others. (Stobbe, 7/6)

The Washington Post:
Opioid Prescriptions Dropped For The First Time In The Modern Drug Crisis
Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s acting director, expressed tempered optimism about the first national decline in opioid prescriptions that the CDC has reported since the crisis began in the late 1990s. She said the prescription rate is still triple the level it was in 1999 and four times what it is in some European countries. Even at the reduced prescribing rate, she said, enough opioids were ordered in 2015 to keep every American medicated round-the-clock for three weeks. (Bernstein, 7/6)

The Washington Post:
Deaths From Cancer Higher In Rural America, CDC Finds
Despite decreases in cancer death rates nationwide, a new report shows they are higher in rural America than in urban areas of the United States. The report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that rural areas had higher rates of new cases as well as of deaths from cancers related to tobacco use, such as lung and laryngeal cancers, and those that can be prevented by screening, such as colorectal and cervical cancers. (Sun, 7/6)

The Washington Post:
Drug Trade Group Sues Maryland Over First-In-The-Nation Price-Gouging Law
In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday against state Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) and Dennis Schrader, the secretary of the state Department of Health, the Association for Accessible Medicines asked the U.S. District Court of Maryland in Greenbelt for an injunction to block the law, which it argues is unconstitutional. “It will harm patients and our communities by reducing choice and limiting access to essential medicines that people need,” Chip Davis, chief executive officer of the association, said in a statement. (Wiggins, 7/6)

The Wall Street Journal:
Maryland Sued By Generic-Drug Trade Group Over New Pricing Law
The law, enacted in May and set to take effect in October, bars “unconscionable” price increases for generic drugs. It authorizes the Maryland attorney general to sue companies to try to roll back certain price hikes and seek civil penalties of $10,000 per violation. It was enacted in response to what supporters said were unjustified price increases for older drugs that are essential to patients’ health, such as Turing Pharmaceuticals’ 5000% increase in the price of the antiparasitic drug Daraprim in 2015. (Loftus, 7/6)

The New York Times:
New York Hospital Offers To Treat British Baby With Rare Disease
A leading academic medical center in New York City has offered to treat Charlie Gard, an 11-month-old infant in Britain who was born with a rare and fatal genetic disease. European courts have ruled that he should be taken off life support, as there are no effective treatments for his condition. His parents were denied permission to bring him to the United States for experimental therapy. (Rabin, 7/6)

The Associated Press:
Governor Launches Probe Into Hospital’s Handling Of Gunman
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday launched an investigation into a hospital’s handling of a man who sought psychiatric care just days before he fatally ambushed a New York Police Department officer sitting in a mobile command post. “Under tragic circumstances such as these, it is critical to ensure all proper procedures and safeguards were taken,” Cuomo said Thursday in a statement. (7/6)